7 Things You Can Do to Improve Your Social Media Profiles

7 Things You Can Do to Improve Your Social Media Profiles

Are your social media profiles working for you? Are they optimized for peak performance?

Sometimes we get a little sidetracked or distracted by our work. We can get so involved with our actual businesses or blogs that we completely forget or neglect our actual profile pages for our accounts. It happens to the best of us! It’s important that you update your social profiles to reflect your current status, and eliminate outdated or incorrect information, or simply flesh out your profiles with more informative descriptions for your fans and followers alike.

We have compiled a helpful list of things you can do right now that can help your accounts to be more optimized, accurate, informative, and appealing.

1. Consistent look across all social channels

Years ago, most companies were only active on a couple of social media platforms, but today, most companies are managing several social media platforms. Because of this you want to ensure that your customers can easily and readily identify your brand.

Because customers are finding your company or business on so many different platforms, it’s more important than ever to maintain brand consistency across all social channels.

To help maintain a consistent feel across all of your social media, keep a consistent style of design and graphics across all channels. This means using the same colors, fonts and iconic badges used to represent your business.

Having the same content on every platform may feel redundant but it’s important to remember you are building brand recognition and consistency.

You probably shouldn’t always use the same image files as your profile badge and header. In many cases, you should consider modifying your social channel images to work with the platform you are adding them to. We will get more into sizing requirements in the next section.

2. Follow proper image sizing protocols

For a small business, your social media channels are often times the first opportunity a prospective customer encounters your brand. It’s important that your layout and design falls within the sizing requirements designated by the social platform. You want to avoid using images that are too large, too small, blurry, or distorted in any way that could give your customer the wrong first impression.

With today’s technology there is absolutely no reason for you to not have the correct sizing or optimization for images. It only takes a few moments, and many times can be accomplished with free apps and programs such as Canva.com.

Feel free to print out the “cheat-sheet” below to have an on-hand reference chart for the correct image sizes for the most popular social media platforms. Want it in a PDF file to print for later? Download the PDF version here.

3. Use keyword rich text in your social profiles as well as posts

Google is a very well-known search engine and resource for information, but did you know that Facebook can also be used for the same thing? The search function on Facebook can be used to not only find people, but businesses and specific topics as well.

In order to really maximize your potential exposure and show in Google as well as Facebook searches, you want to ensure that your profile is laden with key-word rich text. This also applies to every post you make.

In your social media profile, (usually the About Us section) be sure to include your business or personal name, the city in which you do business, and a clear description about what it is your business does in a way that works with plenty of searchable keywords. Take advantage of any areas that allow you to fill in your own information, such as “About Us”, “Mission Statement”, “Company Overview” or “Contact Information”.

In your posts, it’s always a good idea to include a strong headline. In many cases, you have enough room to add descriptive text in order to alert your audience as to the nature of the post. Be sure to take advantage of this as a means to use keywords relating to the post itself.

4. Use hashtags specific to your brand

It seems hashtags have social media over by storm. Hashtags are convenient short tags that help people follow conversations much easier, or find relevant topics they may be interested in. As important as hashtags can be, you want to be sure you are using them appropriately.

Don’t overdo it! We all love seeing hashtags but there is the possibility of overusing them. If you feel you may be getting close to the point of overusing hashtags, you’ve probably already overdone it. Try to keep them descriptive, but short. No one likes to read long hashtags, and the longer they are, the more difficult they are to remember easily, which betrays the intent and usefulness of the tool itself.

Try to avoid creating hashtags that are difficult to spell for your brand. The easier the tag is, the better for your followers, and ultimately, the better for you.

While you should always conduct your own research on regular hashtags to be utilized in your own posts, it’s also a fantastic way to extend your brand by creating your own custom hashtags for use on your own social shares.

Always research your desired hashtag prior to using it, even if you don’t believe anyone could possibly be using it. It’s always a good idea to check on the history of a particular hashtag, as it may have been used in the past or is currently in use by something or someone you may not want your brand to be associated with!

5. Link to your other social media profiles

Sharing your links on other social media platforms is excellent for drawing in followers from sources that already like your content, but you are also building more links, which is great for Search Engine Optimization.

It’s a good idea to check your “About” sections to see if you can add links for your other social media accounts. In many cases, you can simply add the link right into the description. (see #3 above how we added our website link into our “company overview” on Facebook).

Always be on the lookout for uncommon areas to add your website and social media platforms, such as in an image description, or on your social media header image or profile badge.

Adding apps and tabs to Facebook is an easy way to add links to your other social networks in plain sight. Using an easy to use plugin such as Woobox, you can add multiple networks to the sidebar of your Facebook page and have those tabs lead directly to a feed within Facebook.

It’s perfectly acceptable to post your social channels in status updates, or create photo galleries or single image posts with the icon of the social media channel with the link directly in it.

6. Like pages as your Facebook page (rather than as yourself)

You may have multiple Facebook accounts if you use it personally, and professionally. Sometimes it’s important to distinguish your posts from one another. By changing which account your posts will be associated with, you can easily create posts from your business profile without conflating content posts with your personal profile.

You can switch between profiles easily, by simply clicking on the right-most arrow on the top blue toolbar of the page. This brings up a drop-down menu, from which you can select any accounts you are also associated with. Select which account you wish to post from, and you’re all set! You can begin creating posts from the selected profile.

From here, you can like other pages and follow profiles relevant to your own interests pertaining to your business profile. This can lead others back to your page when you like, follow, post comments, share things, or create status updates. This also helps in building authority on specific topics on your fan or business page rather than from your personal profile.

7. Use visual media heavily

It’s important to recognize how useful image usage in posts can be. Typically, posts with images or other visual media have much higher engagement rates over simple text posts. Our society has shifted somewhat from being a “tell it” to more of a “show it” mentality. Networked people crave visual interaction over non-interactive text.

You can, in many cases, share public images, but for your own marketing efforts, it’s more prudent to create your own original visual content. You can create your own motivational quotes, infographics, checklists, and slideshares for this purpose.

While visual context is important, don’t shy away from providing meaningful text overlays on top of the images in order to better explain the context of a particular image or set of images.

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2 Comments

Using social media as a medium for business (specifically marketing and promotion) has been very much effective. These tips you have provided here are really really useful. It is important that you project your image and your brand clearly and in a way that you will earn your target market’s trust. Doing so will increase your trust and professional points upon your followers. (Original link removed due to 404 error when clicked)

To some entrepreneurs, social media marketing is the “next big thing,” a temporary yet powerful fad that must be taken advantage of while it’s still in the spotlight. To others, it’s a buzzword with no practical advantages and a steep, complicated learning curve.

Just fill out the form and gain access our FREE eBook “The 9 Social Media Strategies Your Small Business Must Use to Compete with Big Business” plus we will send you weekly tips and ideas to help you with your social media presence!